[theforum] evolt.org site is changing - come and help!

Martin Burns martin at easyweb.co.uk
Tue Nov 23 04:18:25 CST 2004


Fellow evolters

For the last 5+ years, www.evolt.org has lived on a custom-built
CMS, based on Cold Fusion, migrating from MS Access (yes, really)
and Windows NT to Oracle and Linux to MS SQL and Windows 2000 along
the way.

This platform has served evolt.org extremely well over the years,
and most of that is down to a small number of dedicated past and present
evolters who put in time and effort to hand-craft the system from raw
code to support evolt's needs. When we started, CMSs cost $100K and more,
and to produce one ourselves (and then open-source it) was fairly
revolutionary.

Among the heroes that did this for evolt.org are:
 * Walker Fenton
 * Dan Cody
 * Rudy Limeback
 * Matt Warden
 * Adrian Roselli
and in particular, Jeff Howden who has largely borne the development
effort alone for the last couple of years.

There were also lots of people who worked very hard on the front end of
the site - see the article on evolt.org for more details:
http://evolt.org/article/Inside_the_evolt_org_Rebuild_The_HTML_and_CSS/20/5816/index.html

However, over the last couple of years, we've increasingly wanted a few
things that our current system couldn't do without much more developer
time than we had available, particularly:

 1) Full Internationalisation (i18n) and Localisation (l10n)
 2) A new front end, based on CSS layout

We also felt a desire to use free tools that were within the reach of
every evolter, and wanted to be able to stand on the shoulders of
non-evolters in producing new functionality, so we didn't always have
to code everything ourselves from scratch.

With all that in mind, evolt.org has decided:
http://lists.evolt.org/theforumarchive/Week-of-Mon-20041115/005175.html
http://lists.evolt.org/theforumarchive/Week-of-Mon-20041115/005233.html
to move http://www.evolt.org to the OSS CMS Drupal: http://www.drupal.org/
which is based on MySQL/PHP.

You can see the planning to date in the project wiki at
http://wiki.evolt.org/index.php/Evolt.org_Rebuild_%282004%29

If you're new to Drupal, Elfur Logadottír has set up a standard drupal install with a
number of handy modules that you can play with (add content etc) at
http://evolt.elfur.org/drupal/

We've also got an early Proof of Concept running with a copy of the current site content:
http://evolt.userfrenzy.com/
and based on a front end design produced last year (note that we haven't migrated user
passwords, so you won't be able to log in).

Finally, we have a comparison of what the current site does -v- standard Drupal -v- the
PoC instance of Drupal:
http://lists.evolt.org/theforumarchive/Week-of-Mon-20041115/005225.html

Here's the fun bit: We'd like to do this in time for evolt's 6th birthday.
Which is about 3 weeks away. And the more eyes that are on this, the better.

If you'd like to help in the development and launch of the new site, please sign up for
the evolt.org management list at http://lists.evolt.org/mailman/listinfo/theforum


Cheers
Martin
on behalf of evolt.org
-- 
Christmas presents for parents of young kids:
Toddler Jigsaws: http://www.purpur.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=95
Cute Baby Socks: http://www.purpur.co.uk/shop/index.php?main_page=index&cPath=85_96



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